Understanding Work-life
According to the global survey Talent Pulse Survey conducted by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in 2005 on 1396 respondents in over 60 countries, it found that the top 3 people issues selected by the respondents facing organizations include attracting and retaining key talent and increasing demand for Work-life balance. Organizations have to address the employees’ demand for work-life balance in order to be able to attract and retain their key talent so as to stay competitive.
What are Work-life strategies?
Generally, Work-life strategies are solutions that would help to address the work-life issues faced by employees and enable them to contribute in the workplace effectively. There are many innovative solutions that can be generated to support employees. Broadly there are 3 main categories of Work-life Strategies that are examined:
- Flexible Work Arrangement
This could be in the form of flexible place, flexible working hours or alternative work arrangement comprising of the following solutions:
Telecommuting
Telecommuting allows the employees to have the flexibility to work from anywhere using a laptop to access their company’s server or emails. An employee could perform their work from home, overseas or at client’s workplace or anywhere. Employees can manage their time better with telecommuting.
Flexible Working Hours
Staggered working hours: It is a form of staggered hours to provide flexibility for employees to commence work at a more convenient time.
Compressed working hours: Employees could work more hours on certain days and have a complete rest days on other days.
Part-time working hours: Employees may opt to work and be paid for a specified number of hours per month.
Job Sharing: This usually involves 2 persons sharing a job.
Flexible Scheduling: This is used usually in shift work.
- Employee Support Programmes
These could include any programmes that help employees to cope in their workplace to improve their work being or deal with any work or family needs.
- Employees Benefits Scheme
This usually includes leave schemes such as annual leave, family care leave, children care leave and so on. Employees may be given a certain amount of allocated monetary support for child care, optical needs, family outing, etc.
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